Pacific Rim Crossover with Godzilla and King Kong May Happen

5 months ago

After years of waiting, Pacific Rim 2 is finally on the way. The movie is in the can and is set for release next year. If all goes well, it won’t stop there either. Director Steven S. DeKnight has been talking a bit about future plans for the franchise, which are quite big. Literally. As it turns out, there’s been discussions with Universal about having Pacific Rim crossover with their MonsterVerse, which includes Godzilla and King Kong. Here’s what he had to say about it.

“I won’t say there’s an Easter Egg but there’s been a lot of discussion about that possibility [of crossing over]. Look I think it would be fantastic to have the Pacific Rim universe join Legendary’s Monster Universe, it seems like a natural step. And part of the big overall plan after the third movie we’ve talked about is that could happen, it’s always a possibility. It’s by far not a certainty; it’s merely theoretical at this point, but as a fan myself I would love to see that happen.”

When Universal announced their plans for the MonsterVerse, which started with 2014’s Godzilla and continued this year with Kong: Skull Island, fans speculated that Pacific Rim could factor into that at some point. But this serves as confirmation and that is a huge deal. If Pacific Rim does well at the box office, there’s a real chance that something like this could happen. As Steven S. DeKnight also reveals, the upcoming sequel does leave it open for Pacific Rim 3 to happen.

“Oh we definitely leave it open to another installment. The tricky thing with something like this is you want to not end on a cliffhanger. You don’t want an Empire Strikes Back cliffhanger unless you know you’re gonna do a third movie, you want to leave it open but also wrap it up. So that’s very much what we did on this movie. It has a definitive ending but very much open to the next chapter.”

It sounds like that next chapter could involve giant robots throwing down with Godzilla and, who knows? Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah are being introduced in Godzilla 2, which arrives in early 2019. Maybe Mechagodzilla could throw down with a Jaeger? As revealed in a previous interview, Steven S. DeKnight, who took over as director for Guillermo Del Toro on this upcoming Pacific Rim installment, is open to turning this into a cinematic universe. Why not just make it part of the MonsterVerse instead?

“The plan was always to use this movie as a launching pad. If enough people show up to this, we’ve already talked about the plot of the third movie, and how the end of the third movie would expand the universe to a Star Wars/Star Trek-style [franchise] where you can go in many, many different directions. You can go main canon, you can go spin-offs, you can go one-offs. Yeah, that’s the plan. And I would love to see an animated TV show based on this.”

The real question is, can they add Pacific Rim to the MonsterVerse without it feeling totally insane and forced? It’s possible, but also hard to imagine. Then again, whatever gets us Godzilla squaring off with a Jaeger may be worth it. As this interview with Collider reveals, if Pacific Rim 2, which arrives on March 22, 2018, is a hit, that may be enough to make this happen. Next up for the MonsterVerse is Godzilla 2, which arrives on March 22, 2019. Godzilla vs. Kong is up after that on May 22, 2020.